Orange County voters raise election questions ahead of Florida’s primary
ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. —
With one week to go before Florida’s primary elections, voters across the state and in Orange County are dealing with a range of issues as they attempt to cast ballots.
Some candidates have withdrawn from races, even though their names appear on ballots that have already been printed.
And depending on which county you live in, you may or may not have received a printed sample ballot to research, fill out and take with you to vote.
In Orange County, a bank of trained customer service agents is working phones and handling questions at the front desk at the elections headquarters downtown.
Some voters have been giving mixed reviews, which they have also shared on social media or directly with WESH 2 News, regarding a decision by Orange County Supervisor of Elections Karen Castor Dentel to send mailers with QR codes to scan in order to review sample ballots.
But Dentel told WESH 2 News she is making changes, adding, “Going forward, after hearing feedback from our voters, we will continue to send out the mailed sample ballot mailers with paper in addition to other ways they can access updated information.”
QR codes on mailers also provide information on early voting locations and enable voters up to Aug. 6 to request a vote-by-mail ballot, which some voters tell us they found convenient.
One voter who went to the Supervisor of Elections office in Orange County to cast an early vote complained to WESH 2 News that they didn’t notice the signs in the voting booths that indicated two races where candidates had dropped out, and said they would have appreciated election workers pointing that out when handing out ballots.
And then there’s the mysterious case of the ballot in the Lake Eola Heights historic district that was mailed from a home on East Concord Street. It never made it to the elections office. Instead, it ended up in the mailbox of a neighbor, who had no idea where it had come from because the sender’s address on a vote-by-mail return envelope is concealed. The neighbor provided it to WESH 2 News, and we tracked down the voter, Mike Woodhall, who was grateful and told us, “If it happened to me, it can happen to anybody.”
He has mobility challenges and placed his mail ballot in his box with outgoing mail. The ballot was discovered in the neighbor’s mailbox a couple of doors down the street, in what appears to be a postal delivery error.
Woodhall is worried he might not be the only one this has happened to, wondering, “What’s the percentage? Let’s say it’s one in a thousand, which is less than one percent. And you look at that on a total population, that’s a huge number of votes that are potentially lost. And I would say the potential to lose ballots is far greater than the potential for fraud.”
Addressing the delivery mistake, Supervisor Dentel said, “Overall, the post office handles election mail very carefully.”
With Woodhall’s permission, we delivered his ballot to the elections office. State law permits someone to deliver the mail ballots of immediate family members and up to two other non-family members.
Wesh 2 News reached out to the Postal Service, which did not explain the failed delivery of the mail ballot, but told us, “The Postal Service is committed to the timely and secure delivery of the nation’s Election Mail. In general, any customer inadvertently receiving a piece of mail that is not addressed to them should return it to their mailbox or give it to their carrier.”